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Navigation Field Trip

Field trip: Wilderness Navigation

Navigation Field Trip - Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park

The field trip is a one-day outing at Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park where you will practice and demonstrate your competency in map, compass and navigation principles. You will complete a "leap frog" navigation exercise in pairs and a solo navigation exercise.

Contacts

Melissa White
Melissa White
Primary Leader
  • *Varies*, Easy, Easy/Moderate, Moderate
  • Easy
  • Mileage: 4.0 mi
  • Elevation Gain: 500 ft

Students who successfully complete the eLearning workshop will participate in the field trip, which involves a number of activities that will test your knowledge of map, compass, and navigation principles in real-world conditions. Successful completion of the field session is required in order to earn your Navigation badge. For the field session, you will be traveling steep, rough terrain in Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park at the northern end of the Kitsap Peninsula.  Some areas feature logging slash covered by brush  and other areas have dense forest. Students will perform some navigation activities with partners.  The final exercise will involve solo travel following a bearing through a densely-forested and vegetated hillside until you intersect a trail,  which will allow the accuracy of your navigation to be measured from the correct intersection point.

Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park at 8:00 AM. Specific coordinates and instructions will be emailed after completion of the eLearning class.

Badges

students will earn:

instructors will earn:

Route/Place

Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park

Roster
Required Equipment

Required Equipment

Mountaineers-acceptable compass is mandatory.  Declination MUST be adjustable on the compass (look for a small screw on the bezel). See below for full requirements.  All students must have their own Mountaineers-acceptable compass for the field trip as they cannot be shared during the field trip.

You'll also need:

  • Appropriate clothing and footwear, including hiking boots, sturdy rain gear, extra warm garments, hat and gloves.  Do not wear cotton!
  • Mountaineers Ten Essentials, lunch and extra food, plenty of water
  • A ziplock bag of at least 1 gallon size to protect maps and other handouts.   Even when it is not raining or snowing, the brush you'll be traveling through is usually wet, so do not wear cotton clothing and be sure to bring your rain gear.   

The field session usually ends mid-afternoon, but the ending time can vary and everyone will stay until the last student returns to the parking lot.

Port Gamble is a county park, so no parking pass is required.

Your compass  MUST have the following features:

  • Adjustable declination. Some compasses are sold with “declination scale,” which means the declination is NOT adjustable. 
  • A transparent, rectangular base plate 3-4 inches in length. You’ll need the transparency and the straight edges for plotting and triangulating on the map. Avoid models with small, oval, or tinted baseplates.
  • Degrees in 2-degree (or 1-degree) increments and marked from 0 to 360°.You’ll need the accuracy of the 2‑degree increments. Avoid compasses called “quadrant,” that are marked 0-90° four times around the bezel.
  • Meridian lines. These lines are marked inside the rotating dial and are parallel with the north-south line.

These features are also strongly recommended:

  • Sighting mirror.  This offers better precision and can also be used for signaling.
  • Inclinometer. Also called a clinometer, this allows you to measure slope.
  • Romer scale. While not essential, this will make your map work easier. A 1:24,000 metric Romer is ideal for working with the UTM scale on USGS maps.

If you're not sure where to start, the Suunto MC-2 NH USGS is one example of a compass that includes these features. The table on p. 36 of the required Burns & Burns book lists  a number of similar models from various brands. Because manufacturers change their compasses periodically, double-check the feature set before making any purchases, and reach out to the course leaders if you have questions.

Trip Reports